12October1995

London: 12 October 1995
My dear folks,

Jones is home. It was a meeting of the mutually exhausted. She had spent 48 hours on a bus travelling from Loule to London - with a 9-hour break in Paris & no sleep to speak of. I had barely completed a pattern of night shifts & was doing my usual body- wrenching reversion. I had intended to get up at 5 a.m. to meet the bus - due in at 6. As it happened, a call from an old (and elderly) colleague in the US shortly before 5 served as an alarm instead. He & his wife are due in London on holiday & are to stay a while with us. Since I was planning to meet them & had received 3 different arrival flights/times for them from various sources, I’d sent off urgent faxes seeking clarification. They took the urgency literally. Fortunately, they are arriving on Friday. I was gratified that they were not turning up early today (one possibility) as neither we nor the flat were in any state to receive them.

I got to Victoria coach station at 6 a.m. to find the place deserted. After 20 minutes’ exploration, I discovered the arrivals section of the station across the road. That too was all but deserted. A sign labelled IMPORTANT said that until October 21 (when Britain follows Europe in going over to winter time) all buses from the Continent would arrive an hour later than scheduled. The first buses started rolling in - from places like Liverpool and Dublin. They disgorged lots of young backpacking types & single mothers with young children & fraying tempers. I watched a policeman ticketing a motorist who had parked in a taxi bay. Jones’s bus arrived at 7.45. I brought her home, where we dined on Parisian croissants & went to bed - but not before she expressed some alarm at the unJoneslike state of the flat.

I awoke at lunchtime to find her deep in autumn cleaning. She was not pleased with the way she found things or with Mavis who had bitten her (hard enough to irritate her). I made my plea in mitigation - several nights at work, finding new tenants for a flat, fixing other people’s computer problems (wish I could fix my own) and preparing for a BBC Board for a more senior job. A lot of good people were going for the job - as I was well aware. It wasn’t an easy board, especially as it came in the midst of my night shifts & I had to get up from my bed mid-afternoon to take it. Even so it went rather well - but I didn’t get the job. The boss called me in the following morning to say the examiners had agonised for an hour over the appointment before giving it to somebody else. She was complimentary about my performance & terribly sorry that there were not more jobs available - as I would have got one. So was I. But that’s life.

This afternoon, we walked up the canal to Sainsbury’s to top up on supplies. Jones told off one young woman who was cycling up the canal path. Many cyclists do, some rather recklessly. I made a plea for cyclists nevertheless, as I’m often enough tempted on to the pavements myself. When it’s a choice between being wedged in-between three lanes of big trucks and using the pavement, the pavement wins. Some influential members of the government are at last making a play for cycle lanes but not in time I suspect to avoid a thrashing at the next election. This however is not a political letter.

Meanwhile, Jones & I plan to spend Saturday & Sunday away - at a self catering cottage advertised in her garden magazine. Sounds nice. It’s a birthday weekend. I don’t believe in birthdays any longer but I do like away weekends.